It’s been a while since I watched live TV and historically Microsoft has not had much of a presence on Australian TV which is why it came as bit of a shock to me a few minutes ago to find myself watching a locally produced and tailored Bing ad. As it turns out, there’s even a whole series of them.

The other six Bing ads in the series of seven are 15 second spots entirely dedicated to showing off unique features of the Bing search engine – including hover preview, hot spots, instant answers, infinite scroll, video previews and related searches. These ads are a stark contrast to the US-based Bing ads which I had originally criticized for not showing enough of the product. I like these a lot better.

I’ve never seen the ad(s) on TV (I too am not much of a TV watcher these days), but that first ad is bunged onto the end of every Nine News podcast. Just after the newsreader signs off by saying “and make sure to use Bing for all your online searches”. Tacky!

Seriously, Bing is an awesome product/service, which is clouded by a bunch of totally ‘disconnected from the market, audience and chord of the US consumer’ marketing team.
These advs are a trillion times better seiously –
‘Search Overload’ – really?

Glen > if you want the full Bing “experience”, just change the language to “United States – English” in the Bing homepage. Like a lot of Internet services (Facebook Lite for instance), changing the language will enable you to test the features restricted to some countries. ;o)